Data quality online is one of the biggest problems manufacturers face. How good your product “looks” online (including not just clean photos, but also well-written product descriptions and titles) impacts everything from SEO rankings to customer preference to channel relations – so getting it right is important.

There’s a lot that goes into data quality. One critical element is the title. This is often the first and only information your prospect is going to see before making that all important decision to click or not to click. This snippet of text is also weighted heavily by the search engines, meaning a good title will get you in front of more prospects.

The biggest mistake we see manufacturers make is using their 'own' terms for items, assuming that everyone knows what they mean. It's call the 'Curse of Knowledge' and can plague everyone from industrial manufacturers to beverage Companies that insist on calling their product 'soda'

At Yeoman we’ve developed a best practice for product titles, which uses a standard to ensure that the product title provides enough detail to assist the user in their search and navigation without having to see the image or read the detailed description. This provides a clearer and more consistent user experience as well as helps optimize each page for internal and external search engines.

Seems pretty straightforward. But here’s where it gets tricky.

For example, what word do you use to describe carbonated soft drinks? According to the handy visual on popvssoda.com, there are three major regional variations including “soda” (Northeast, California), “pop” (Midwest), and “Coke” (South).

So when writing a best practice title, how do you reconcile regional variations to create a consistent experience that ensures customers can find products regardless of where they see them online (Google, Bing, Shopatron, Amazon, etc) – or where the customer is physically located?

Good question.

At Yeoman we’ve developed a best practice for product titles, which uses a standard to ensure that the product title provides enough detail to assist the user in their search and navigation without having to see the image or read the detailed description. This provides a clearer and more consistent user experience as well as helps optimize each page for internal and external search engines.

Give us a shout – we specialize in making sure your online data quality is top notch – no matter what kind of soda-pop your customers prefer.